Chances are that at some
point over the last few weeks you have heard talk of fake news and
how it was used as a tool for the Republican Party this election
cycle. Claims of Russian hackers and illegitimate elections fill
headlines across the nation, but this raises the question, why is
it that claims of fake news emerge only now when the information
no longer serves the liberal narrative?
What about when the "hands up don't shoot" headline synonymous
with the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson inspired hundreds
of thousands of people to take up the mantle of the Black Lives
Matter movement, touting the misguided belief that African
American citizens were under constant threat of murder and abuse
at the hands of the police? When the Grand Jury decided that the shooting was a lawful one, and that based on the
evidence in the case, the story that Michael Brown was shot with
his hands in the air in surrender was a falsehood, the left was
silent. The entirety of the BLM movement which has incited fear
and hate that has often erupted into violence, was based on this
bit of fiction and yet we hear no dissenting opinions from the
left.
In the case of the Duke Lacrosse team, where a group of
well-to-do Lacrosse players at Duke University were subjected to
torment, threats of violence, and public ridicule behind the
accusations of gang rape from an exotic dancer, the liberal media
zealously covered this case, decrying these young men as
misogynists and rapists long before any of the facts were in. Even
though the accusations were proven false, the lives of these students were ravaged by the ordeal.
Yet again we see lies and misinformation flying under the radar of
the mainstream media because it served the narrative.
More recently, we look to the accusations of rape and
sexual assault that conveniently arose in the wake of President
Elect Donald Trump's presidential campaign. As the Campaign drew
closer to its conclusion, allegations of rape and sexual assault
against Trump began sprouting up, but mysteriously vanished shortly thereafter. Of course, the usual liberal
media outlets like the Huffington Post jumped into action, hoping
to legitimize these fictitious claims and burn the Trump campaign
to the ground. Another example of "fake news" getting a pass from
the media when the lies it's telling are in line with their
narrative.
I would never argue that even a decent portion of the media is
unbiased or non-partisan, but the fact that they only now decide
to throw their arms in the air over fake news when it no longer
serves their purposes is something that I find very telling about
the proponents of the political left.
Your examples are not "fake news." They are false narratives. There is a difference, which I will attempt to explain.
When a conspiracy theorist reports that John Podesta's emails about pizza are actually an elaborate code used by members of a child sex abuse ring being run out of the back room of a pizza parlor, that is fake news, because it is a completely made-up story.
The "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" and Duke lacrosse narratives were based on real news (i.e., a police officer actually shot Michael Brown, and a woman actually reported being raped by the Duke lacrosse players). However, in one case there was a false narrative based on incorrect information from purported eyewitnesses that Brown had his hands up and was surrendering when he was shot), and in the other case there was a false narrative based on a rape report that was later disproved.
This may seem like a technicality, but it is an important distinction. When calling something "fake news," the term really should apply only to news that is actually "fake."